CHANGING LANES: Touched by the legacy he leaves

I never knew Robin Williams. I knew his work. But I remain touched by the legacy he leaves because the characters he inhabited helped me believe in mercy.

I was at the gym when I learned that Robin Williams had died. Multiple TV screens confirmed what my Facebook news feed suggested. Williams was found dead of apparent suicide after a recent relapse into active alcoholism. He was 63.

Some celebrity deaths seem inevitable because of careless living. Some seem tragic because a talented individual left the world too soon. A fortunate few stars fade out in a manner that leaves an appreciative smile on our faces. It’s hard to know which category Williams’ death falls into. Perhaps none of them. Perhaps all three.

Robin Williams was an imperfect man. By his own accounts, his tendencies toward excess had irreparably wounded his marriages. In 2010 he stated, “You know, I was shameful, and you do stuff that causes disgust, and that’s hard to recover from. You can say, ‘I forgive you’ and all that stuff, but it’s not the same as recovering from it. It’s not coming back.”

Williams was a man who was haunted by the sort of shame that could not be erased by fame or fortune. He lived large and was open about his struggles with addiction and mental illness. I can’t help but laugh out loud as I remember his manic voice as the genie in “Aladdin.”

Williams was capable of deep compassion and empathy for other souls wrestling with their own demons. Memories of the gruff yet merciful therapist in “Good Will Hunting” tug at my heart as I think of Williams’ voice breaking through to the troubled Will Hunting character by saying repeatedly, “It’s not your fault!” until Will’s tears could finally come. That scene worked because it rang true. Williams’ compassion for Will helped the audience forgive and then root for an angry young man.

“Mrs. Doubtfire” is a comedy that I’ve watched with gratitude as a mother of children who’ve faced their parent’s divorce. Williams holds nothing back in his performance of a loving yet flawed father. That movie helped me understand an important truth: That no matter the pain of uncoupling that two adults might experience it is essential that both parents remain an active presence in the lives of their children.

I think of Robin Williams leading a group of repressed prep school boys into the forbidden zone of wild emotion as he made poetry real. I can still hear him whisper “Carpe Diem!” to a group of young men who were in danger of remaining forever trapped by the expectations of an elder generation that was certain that it knew best. In a poignant case of life imitating art, Williams’ death illustrates a lesson from the movie: That challenging convention and feeling more emotion than is socially acceptable can lead a good soul to surrender to despair.

I never knew Robin Williams. I knew his work. But I remain touched by the legacy he leaves because the characters he inhabited helped me believe in mercy. The sort of compassion that Robin Williams was able to translate to the big screen locates the best part of what it means to be human.

To hear that Robin Williams is dead by his own hand is sobering. If such a wise and kind soul cannot bear the weight of this world then what hope do the rest of us have? Like many of you, I am saddened by the up-tick in violence across the world and am grieved the Middle East seems unable to exist without constant flash points of violence and hate. I can’t help but wonder if Williams’ deeply empathic nature felt the weight of the world’s pain a little too much.

Yet – it’s pointless to speculate why Williams did what he did. We can’t know and to try to determine a definitive reason why he chose to commit suicide is to veer dangerously close to judging the choices of a public man’s private pain. That’s an arrogant and disrespectful thing to do.

Perhaps I feel protective of Williams because I know too well the disease of depression because it runs on both sides of my family. My beloved Aunt Polly took her own life when she was 27. My father’s father who I still call “Big Pete” has reckoned with a melancholy temperament for most of his life. Both individuals touched me deeply.

One of my earliest memories is of my Aunt Polly sponging down my 4-year-old self when I had a high fever on our shared birthday. It was the fourth of July and the rest of the family was celebrating with exuberance when Polly must’ve heard my tears. She stayed with me all day.

“Big Pete” was the first man I met who told me that I was intelligent and that while my looks would fade, my mind could continue to grow if I chose to cultivate it. He took my teenaged self to the bookstore and let me spend all afternoon picking out as many books as I wanted.

My impression of both of these relatives whose lives were marked with despair is that they were the kindest people I knew. Many secondhand accounts of Robin Williams highlight his capacity to engage emotionally in a meaningful interchange with a stranger.

Robin Williams was more than pleasant. He was deeply affirming of the human dignity in the individuals who shared a bit of what mattered to them most with him. Williams was capable of stepping outside whatever experience he was having to encourage other souls to keep their chin up and to live with dignity.

The same paradox of extreme empathy that I’ve witnessed in beloved relatives who’ve been haunted by the specter of depressive illness seems to exist in the life of Robin Williams. All of these souls are people who dared to feel deeply and ask hard questions about what it means to be human. Each of them has made the world a better place.

May God have mercy on their kind souls and may they rest in peace.

Katherine Bennett is the mother of four, a Hingham resident, and regular Hingham Journal columnist.